Italy: The judicial and the political system

In Italy, the judicial system enjoys a more autonomous position than in most other European countries, both towards the legislative and the executive powers. The autonomy was guaranteed in the Constitution of 1948, due to the experiences during fascism. From the beginning of the 1970s a new generation of radical judges started to reveal corruption among politicians, which resulted in an increasing tension between the judicial and a part of the political system. During the Berlusconi governments, investigative judges took Berlusconi himself and many other center-right politicians to court for corruption, abuse of power, etc. on a long range of occasions. Berlusconi and his coalition responded with severe attacks on judges for being «communists», seeking to undermine the government and the electoral will of the people, and restricting the autonomy of the judicial system. The author argues that the conflict between the two systems is due not only the particular characteristics of Italian politics, but must be explained by the particular traits of the judicial system and the strong politicization of parts of the judicial branch as well.

Cultures of Learning

The article discusses the changing «social contract» of the Norwegian humanities in a historical perspective. Up to the 1960s, the humanistic university disciplines formed part of a tightly knit professional circuit of learning in Norwegian society: The primary function of the Faculty of Arts was to educate teachers for the Gymnasium, and the (re-)production of academic scholarship was largely a surplus of this educational task. This largely corresponded to how the German Philosophische Fakultäten operated in the 19th century, while also paralleling to some extent the way in which academic humanistic scholarship related to the liberal arts colleges in the United States. The student boom of the 1960s and the following rapid growth of academic staffs gradually undermined this system. Instead of introducing liberal arts education in Norway to meet the increased demand for higher education among the middle classes, as some scholars and politicians suggested, the academic community and the State unified around another strategy: to professionalize academic research and loosen the bonds between higher and secondary education. Hence, research rather than education and character formation has become the primary justification of academic scholarship. To the humanities, it is argued, this strategy has proved a mixed blessing.

Egality and Justice

In Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen puts forth two major criticisms of Rawls’ influential theory of justice. First, Cohen argues, Rawls’ theory is insufficiently egalitarian. The difference principle, in particular, allows too much inequality. Secondly, Cohen holds that Rawls minsconstrues the concept of justice itself. On Cohen’s view, justice is ultimately fact-insensitive. What is just does not hang on the contingencies of actual societies and human beings. The (lower-order, fact-sensitive) principles that we actually implement in real societies are rather rules of regulation. Rules of regulation are those rules which best promotes the (higher-order fact-insensitive) ideal of justice (and other worthwhile ideals) in actual societies. Given that Rawls’ principles take into account the contingencies of societies and human beings (including self-serving individual motivation, and ideals such as stability) they are not true principles of justice, but rules of regulation. This article examines the relationship between these two lines of criticisms, and argues that the first criticism (that Rawls’ difference principle allows too much inequality) rests on assumptions (that Rawls’ principles are principles of justice) that the second line of criticism (that they are not) effectively rules out. Further, the article examines how deep the second criticism really cuts.

Regional policy over 50 years: The strategists and the dissolution

In this article we examine the background and the process that led to The Regional Development Fund (RDF) in 1961 and we follow the Norwegian regional policy through the 50 ensuing years.From the beginning, the objectives of the RDF were both to strengthen the economic base of business and industry and to increase employment in regions with a low level of economic activity. Erik Brofoss was one of the most influential national strategists from the end of the Second World War right up to the 1970s. After rounds of tough negotiations he finally accepted the position as chairman of the board and he was a dominant figure in this position for a period of 16 years.

Regional policy became an important issue in Norway and other important national strategists followed Brofoss. In 1994 the principal institutions for the implementation of Norwegian industrial policy, including the RDF, were merged into the National Industrial and Regional Development Fund (SND) and the regional-policy field lost both its dominant actor and its strategists.